TY - JOUR
T1 - Men's and Women's Interpretation and Endorsement of Items Measuring Self-Reported Heterosexual Aggression
AU - Buday, Sarah K.
AU - Peterson, Zoë D.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2015 The Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality.
PY - 2015/11/22
Y1 - 2015/11/22
N2 - Early research on sexual aggression (e.g., sexual coercion, sexual assault, and rape) mainly focused on men as perpetrators and women as victims; more recently, researchers have begun to investigate women as perpetrators of sexual aggression as well. However, most measures of sexual aggression perpetration were designed for use with men and have not been well validated with women. This study sought to examine two different measures of sexual aggression perpetration in terms of their convergent validity for both men and women and to examine gender differences and similarities in item interpretation using open-ended inquiries. Participants were 590 individuals (395 women, 195 men) with a mean age of 25 years (SD = 8.1) recruited from an undergraduate psychology subject pool and an online convenience sample. The majority of the sample was White (65.4%) and Black (20.3%). All measures were completed online anonymously. Results suggested that convergent validity for the two measures was less than optimal, particularly for women. Further, item interpretation analyses revealed that, compared to men, more than twice the percentage of women provided a false-positive response to one of the measures, suggesting that women may be more likely than men to endorse self-report perpetration items incorrectly.
AB - Early research on sexual aggression (e.g., sexual coercion, sexual assault, and rape) mainly focused on men as perpetrators and women as victims; more recently, researchers have begun to investigate women as perpetrators of sexual aggression as well. However, most measures of sexual aggression perpetration were designed for use with men and have not been well validated with women. This study sought to examine two different measures of sexual aggression perpetration in terms of their convergent validity for both men and women and to examine gender differences and similarities in item interpretation using open-ended inquiries. Participants were 590 individuals (395 women, 195 men) with a mean age of 25 years (SD = 8.1) recruited from an undergraduate psychology subject pool and an online convenience sample. The majority of the sample was White (65.4%) and Black (20.3%). All measures were completed online anonymously. Results suggested that convergent validity for the two measures was less than optimal, particularly for women. Further, item interpretation analyses revealed that, compared to men, more than twice the percentage of women provided a false-positive response to one of the measures, suggesting that women may be more likely than men to endorse self-report perpetration items incorrectly.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84945467706&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/00224499.2014.967373
DO - 10.1080/00224499.2014.967373
M3 - Article
C2 - 25369522
AN - SCOPUS:84945467706
SN - 0022-4499
VL - 52
SP - 1042
EP - 1053
JO - Journal of Sex Research
JF - Journal of Sex Research
IS - 9
ER -